Zack Polanski’s big gamble — and the plan if it fails

LONDON — Green leader Zack Polanski is fighting the battle of his political life — and the lines for failure are already being prepped.  

Voters in Holborn and St Pancras will head to the polls next Thursday to replace Keir Starmer, the former prime minister who quit Parliament, with a new MP.

Polanski, the leader of the left-wing populist Green Party, is seeking to kickstart his party’s stalled momentum by grabbing the seat, which has been held by Labour since its creation in 1983.

But even Polanski’s closest allies admit his decision to stand here is a “high risk, high reward” strategy. The vote comes just days after new Prime Minister Andy Burnham cheered his center-left party with a shift onto ground the Greens have long occupied.

Ahead of the Green Party’s own conference — which kicks off in Brighton on Friday — senior party figures are already laying the groundwork in case Polanski’s gamble fails to pay off.

Half a dozen of the 15 Green officials, politicians and activists POLITICO spoke to for this piece — some of whom were granted anonymity to discuss internal party discussions — pointed out that Reform leader Nigel Farage lost seven parliamentary elections before making it to the House of Commons. It’s a point which has also been made by Polanski himself.

“It would be daft to count Zack out after this; he still has the overwhelming support of the party,” one Green politician said of the prospect of a loss.

Reputation on the line

When the news broke that Starmer was stepping down as an MP in early September, members of the Green Party Executive Committee (GPEx) and the party leadership hurriedly jumped onto an online call to decide whether they would throw national resources — money and manpower — at the battle. 

“The decision was clear,” said one official with knowledge of internal discussions. “We can’t forgo an opportunity to take on a fight.” 

While it was not explicitly discussed at that meeting, the official said: “There was a general assumption that if it’s a seat which is sort of in central London and we have a good chance, Zack would run for it.” 

“Zack is our biggest gun, so I think we need to deploy him for the biggest battles. This is one of those big battles,” they added. 

Polanski had already been sounding out his allies and advisers about whether he should put himself up for selection as the candidate via WhatsApp. The Green Party staff team were more hesitant, but those closest to him gave him the thumbs-up, according to the Green politician quoted above.

There is no “route to victory” without the Green leader as the candidate, said Russell Warfield, a close ally of Polanski, and author of “The Green Socialist” — a book about the Green leader’s political rise.

“The only route is to attach the propulsive, star power of the party leader, and do something like the 2024 Corbyn campaign which brought together a wide range of activists on the left who saw the value of putting that person in parliament,” he said. “It was the right thing for him to run.” 

Polanski has gained credit for turbocharging the Green membership since he took over as leader just over a year ago — but this is the first time he will personally be judged by voters. 

“This is a big gamble for him, because it is his personal reputation on the line. But also, if he didn’t run, people would accuse him of bottling it,” said one London Green councilor.

A pact

The departure from the field of Andrew Feinstein — the independent candidate who came second to Starmer with 18.9% of the vote in 2024 — cemented Polanski’s decision to stand.

The former Holborn and St Pancras candidate was road-tripping from Portugal to Spain when news of Starmer’s departure broke. When he stopped driving, he had 780 messages asking what he was going to do. He also had a missed call from Polanski.

Feinstein and Polanski had discussed who might run — and how to avoid splitting the left-wing vote — months before Starmer announced he would leave the Commons.

The anti-corruption campaigner, who is about to publish a book on the conflicts in Gaza and Yemen and must testify against former South African President Jacob Zuma next year, took a night to think about it before telling Polanski he would not stand.

Two days later, Polanski confirmed he would throw his hat in the ring, something Feinstein said he is “very pleased” about.  

“We need a high-profile candidate who is the antithesis of Starmer. That’s why I stood in 2024, to show there’s an alternative,” he said.  

The challenge 

Green activists acknowledge they face an uphill battle. Holborn and St Pancras has been a Labour stronghold for half a century, and despite being a central London seat, the Greens did not sweep to victory in the May local elections as they did elsewhere in the capital. 

 “If we were going for somewhere like Walthamstow or Hackney, we would win with South American dictator levels of support,” said one campaign official. “That’s not the case here.” 

But strategists say it is still important for the Green Party to use these fights to mobilize activists and get their message out. 

“In the past, the Green Party would say: ‘Oh, let’s not participate in by-elections. Let’s only do it where we are 99% sure we’re sure we’ll win, and let’s conserve our energy,'”said the first Green Party official quoted in this piece. “We are a very different Green Party now.”  

But with a week to go, activists are fretting that early mistakes have set them up for defeat.

“We didn’t put in the groundwork,” said one veteran Green Party campaigner, despite Holborn and St Pancras being on the party’s potential by-election list as soon as Starmer stood down.

“We had to run the cleanest, most well-oiled and strategic campaign,” said one Green Party activist. “I think there are some real difficulties, there have been some real fuck ups.” 

The activist cited a reluctance to attack Labour candidate Sagal Abdi-Wali on her personal record in office, an over-reliance on leaflet drops, and a lack of issue-led politics on leaflets at the start of the campaign as errors. 

“I don’t think we’re in a very strong position right now, but there’s still time to turn it around,” they added. 

As Burnham articulated a broader and bolder left-wing project during his inaugural party conference leader’s speech, he nodded to many Green talking points — public ownership, the housing crisis, inequality.

The campaign official previously quoted said they don’t think it will affect the vote on the ground.

“It shows what we already knew — that he’s tacking left,” they added, arguing it heightened the stakes for the new prime minister.

“Burnham’s whole thing is to come in and appease the left — to then lose one of his safest seats to Zack Polanski will drop a nuclear bomb on the whole Burnham project,” the campaign official added.

Speaking in the POLITICO pub at Labour party conference on Monday, the party’s Deputy Leader Lucy Powell said she is “confident” her party will win.

Leadership chatter

Green Party politicians and officials are already working hard to shore up Polanski’s leadership in the event he is defeated.

The Green activist previously quoted predicted that “losing badly” would spark an “internal coup to get Zack out which would probably be unsuccessful.” 

But senior figures say there is no serious challenge. The Green politician quoted above said: “When people are briefing against him in the papers, it’s random members, it’s not Caroline Lucas [a former Green MP] planning a coup.” 

Warfield quipped that “having a political career to ruin is something quite new for a Green candidate,” and a “good problem to have.”

Future of the Green mission 

A significant loss in Holborn would, however, pose big questions for the Greens’ future.

Campaigners have long argued that it was consistent left-wing pressure — and their significant gains in progressive areas during local elections in May — which pushed MPs to dethrone Starmer, and elect a leader who is talking about ending “decades of neoliberalism.”

Warfield warned that there is a risk Labour will stop taking the Green agenda seriously if the party loses badly.

“If we do badly, then Labour can tell themselves they have successfully neutralized the threat from the left and go back to pandering to the right,” he said. “That has political stakes for the country and the direction of the government. That is more important than Zack’s political career.” 

While many Greens — including Warfield — argue that a “disappointing second” would still be a “huge surge in the vote,” it may be difficult to convince campaigners and voters that the Green Party has not taken a hit since its first by-election victory in February in Gorton and Denton. 

But the Green politician quoted above said the party can “manage a loss.”

“The risk is a snap election, but if it’s the election in 2029, people will have forgotten about it,” they said. 

The Green activist quoted above said winning in Holborn and St Pancras is going to be an “uphill battle.” They said the scale of the result would be crucial.

“There’s a massive difference between winning and losing; and losing and losing badly,” they said, warning a bad loss would be a “far greater problem” than a narrow one.  

“If the Greens lose this badly, there’s a 50-60% chance that Burnham would call a snap election,” they predicted. “That’s why I think this election is the fulcrum that determines the near- and medium-term politics of the country.”